More Fast Food Restaurants Are Now Automating (qz.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Wendy's is adding self-service ordering kiosks "to at least 1,000 restaurants, or about 15% of its stores," reports the Los Angeles Times, while McDonald's and Panera Bread are now planning to add kiosks to every restaurant. "Lots of restaurants, not just fast-food chains, are really trying to mitigate the costs of higher wages," says one market research firm, while also citing a survey which found 40% of millennials willing to use kiosks (compared to 30% of restaurant-goers overall).

But in some cases this means more work for human employees. Quartz points out that McDonalds doesn't plan to reduce its workforce after installing kiosks, and Panera Bread "has said that at some locations where it has ordering kiosks, it has actually increased human hours to help the kitchen keep up with the higher number of orders that come in through the more efficient ordering system."

Comments

First

[Anonymous Coward]

... automated post.

please do this for all places

[Anonymous Coward]

after going to japan where many of the major chains had at-table ordering device of some sort and no tips, i cant go back

Re:please do this for all places

[amiga3D]

I used to go to the Olive Garden occasionally when my wife forced me to. They started putting that shit on my table and I always took it off and put it on an empty table. After about my 4th visit the manager told me I had to leave it on the table. I got up and walked out and haven't been back. They can suck my dick. I'm a customer, not a fucking consumer. People that treat me like a consumer don't get my business. This modern thing of letting companies and restaurants and other businesses treat you like something to be sheared for maximum profit is anathema to me. When I sit at the table with a machine that takes up almost an entire place setting there that is inconvenient and an annoyance. It's like they make it so you can't possibly avoid it and that is unacceptable. You might like it and if so good for you. I assure you however that they'll lose at least a quarter of their business to people like me that want to be treated like a customer.

Re:please do this for all places

[Anonymous Coward]

you forgot the linchpin of your argument, "get off my lawn!"

Re:please do this for all places

[oic0]

Personally I just want my darn food while I talk with whoever I'm with. Having another human serve and cater to me does nothing for me and I hate tipping.

Re:please do this for all places

[Dunbal]

When you go to a restaurant part of what you're paying for is the service

Yes, I get mad when I sit at McDonalds and no one comes to my table to take my order. There are restaurants, and there are restaurants. It's the fucking Olive Garden... what do you expect? Next you're going to bitch because someone at PF Changs served you from the wrong side.

Re: please do this for all places

[bill_mcgonigle]

Olive Garden is cheap industrial Italian food. You went to a mass-market corporate restaurant and got treated like you went to a mass-market corporate restaurant. It ought to be expected, like the sodium.

Re: please do this for all places

[Entrope]

"Once you go Japanese, you can't go back" said no one, ever.

Re:please do this for all places

[amiga3D]

I know, it's a sign of old age when you expect service with a smile when you give people money. Nowadays it's "please sir, if I give you some money will you let me eat in your establishment. I promise to grovel and kiss your feet if you'll just favor me by letting me give you money in return for being treated like shit." I think I like it better my way but to each his own.

Re:please do this for all places

[buss_error]

and I hate tipping.

Then quit allowing restaurants to pay servers USD $2.13 an hour and cut the tips.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:please do this for all places

[ShanghaiBill]

I'd say just automate the whole thing and get rid of people altogether, but then they'd just be on welfare.

This is the Lump of Labor Fallacy. There is not a fixed number of jobs in the economy, and eliminating a particular job does not mean "one less job". These kiosks lower costs, and those costs will go to the customers (as lower prices) or the owners (as higher profits). Either way, someone will have more money in their pocket, and will spend that money on other goods, services or investments, generating jobs elsewhere in the economy.

Dead end make-work jobs are not "good for the economy", and the point of work is to create goods and services, not to "keep people busy".

Re:please do this for all places

[ATMAvatar]

This is the Lump of Labor Fallacy. There is not a fixed number of jobs in the economy, and eliminating a particular job does not mean "one less job".

I think you mean that it doesn't necessarily mean one less job. There is a possibility it means that. For example, the business could pocket the extra profit and hoard it rather than reinvest.

Either way, someone will have more money in their pocket, and will spend that money on other goods, services or investments, generating jobs elsewhere in the economy.

As stated above: there is no requirement that the money saved gets spent anywhere. The business could pocket the profit and do nothing with it.

This is actually a growing concern of late, as we have seen a number of top businesses start to hoard cash - the best example of which would be Apple, which is sitting on over $200 Billion.

Dead end make-work jobs are not "good for the economy", and the point of work is to create goods and services, not to "keep people busy".

It's certainly the ideal that everyone works to create more wealth overall. We can hope that automation starts to open up new markets like technological advances of the past did, but we should prepare for the possibility that it won't.

If the worst happens, and we end up with a growing group of poor, hungry individuals, then make work projects could be better than inviting future civil unrest. That's somewhat of a moot point, though, as there is plenty of neglected infrastructure that we as a country could start training and paying people to repair.

Re:please do this for all places

[adolf]

Olive Garden: Prepared and frozen in a factory, and then thawed out just for you!

You're already paying them to warm up a TV dinner/pasta-in-a-bag meal for you. The main difference between Olive Garden and McDonald's is pricing and plating: It's the same factory-food, either way.

There's plenty of places (some near you, no doubt) which do offer fresh food, and service to match. Olive Garden is not amongst them.

Please pick something worthwhile to complain about other than a corporate chain behaving like a corporate chain, and stop embarrassing your wife.

Re:please do this for all places

[ShanghaiBill]

In some restaurants I see customer scrolling from page to page to find the thing that they want

The UIs will improve. But customers will also get better at using the kiosks. At first, many people had problems accepting and dealing with bank ATMs. Even today, some people have problems with self-checkout at grocery stores, even though the UIs have improved.

There were even problems getting people to accept "department stores" where you could actually WALK INTO THE STORE and pick your items off a shelf, rather than handing your list to a clerk at the front counter, and then waiting while your items were retrieved.

Re:please do this for all places

[I'm New Around Here]

Would you accept a warm damp towel from a McDonald's employee?

Unskilled labor mostly going away...

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Unskilled labor is going to mostly disappear except for those tasks where it just isn't possible to automate. A "livable" wage for a task that can be done by a machine is a pipe dream. That's just reality. All the kicking and screaming and class warfare rhetoric isn't going to change it or delay the outcome.

So to that I say, please do go ahead and keep raising the minimum wage. That may actually accelerate the process. The displaced workers will either skill up or you'll see a reverse migration to places where the cost of living and level of automation will make it possible for unskilled workers to survive.

More human work?

[djinn6]

There might be more human work at some locations. Faster service using kiosks might bring in more customers in that restaurant, but the total number of meals people eat always stays the same, which means other non-automated restaurants are losing customers. Since the automated restaurant is serving more people with the same number of employees, the overall effect is a decrease in labor.

Re:More human work?

[dgatwood]

Not necessarily. If food is faster, it might make it more likely for some people who might otherwise keep lunch meats in their refrigerators and a loaf of bread on their countertop.

But in practice, yes, it probably does. And of course the next step is to automate the making of the sandwiches, at which point there won't be a human in the place other than maybe the person who cleans the tables and bathrooms (and only until they perfect the self-busing table). At that point, the destruction of those low-end jobs becomes near-total. In the long term, the only jobs available for humans will be:

• Creative
• Government
• Military
• Sports
• Entertainment
• Escort services and similar
• People who manage the aforementioned groups

That's about it. I might have left out a few things, but that's about it.

The good news is that this will take longer than most people think. As those displaced workers enter the job market, there will be more people willing to do various jobs, which will bring down the cost of that labor to the minimum wage and make automation much less attractive.

The bad news is that automation will indirectly decrease the number of non-minimum-wage jobs by turning them into minimum-wage jobs.

Re:More human work?

[religionofpeas]

They could start selling second breakfast.

It's not a bug, it's a feature

[king neckbeard]

All these people whining about minimum wage increases causing more automation like it's a bad thing. You've all got it backwards. Human labor has been undervalued, so nobody bothered to put effort into being more efficient. If anything, this suggests that we need to raise wages globally so we'll actually quit wasting so much human effort.

Re:It's not a bug, it's a feature

[SlaveToTheGrind]

All these people whining about minimum wage increases causing more automation like it's a bad thing. You've all got it backwards. Human labor has been undervalued, so nobody bothered to put effort into being more efficient.

"Automation" is a bit of stretch here -- we're talking about self-service ordering kiosks. This is effectively just turning around the screen the employee would have used to enter my order and making me use it instead. In most cases that's going to result in a net decrease in efficiency, not an increase. This should be clear enough to anyone who has stood in line watching people endlessly screw around at self-checkout kiosks at a grocery store.

Re:But lets raise minimum wage! -'earn'?

[gtall]

Libertarians would have us live in a dog-eat-dog society. They ignore the rule of law that allows them their freedom. And they'd like everyone armed to the teeth to defend their property.

They'd like everyone to have the right to be bankrupted due to medical issues. Social Security and Medicare keep Grandma off the Libertarians' front lawns. In Ayn Rand's world, airlines could allow for a certain number of plane crashes a year consistent with their profit margins due to customers deciding not to fly and employees finding alternate jobs. Smog and pollution would exist only up to a threshold number of deaths due to pollution. Mercury would not be a controlled pollutant; if you ingest too much, it be your own fault. What? You didn't know you were eating it in that seafood? How come you didn't pull out your home chemistry kit and do your own testing?

What Libertarians do not get is statistics. If you ignore statistics, then you get the every doofus for himself mentality. If you pay attention to statistics, a lot of government programs make sense.

Re:Can't stand kiosks...

[religionofpeas]

What they need is an app so you can prepare your order on your phone with a quick pick menu that consists of things you've ordered before.

Re:But lets raise minimum wage! -'earn'?

[religionofpeas]

What Libertarians do not get is statistics.

Just taking a good look at the Prisoner's Dilemma and Tragedy of the Commons should be enough to understand that you need government programs to enforce cooperation for the benefit of all.

Kiosks are so last year

[JoeyRox]

My family had Chick-fil-A the other day. Placed our entire order on my smartphone through their app. The app can optionally track your itinerary via GPS so that the food is prepared just in time for your arrival.

Re:But lets raise minimum wage! -'earn'?

[Dunbal]

If someone wins the lottery you say 'wow good for them! All their needs are met!' But if someone were to work for 1 hour and meet all their needs for a whole week, suddenly this is 'wrong'?

Of course it's wrong. When you look at the lottery winner, you're forgetting about the 10 million or so other people who bought a ticket and lost. There's no free ride. The lottery company made a profit. The winner keeps a bit of money. And all the losers paid for it.

Hey don't get me wrong I would love to live in a world where I could meet all my needs by working 1 hour per week. However it doesn't work that way. Perhaps one day, when automation has reached a point where everything basically runs itself and all people need to do is a bit of tweaking here and there. But not yet.

Re:About fucking time

[Dunbal]

Humans are far too smart, innovative, aspiring and complex

You need to meet more humans.

Re:But lets raise minimum wage! -'earn'?

[Hognoxious]

Meddling seems very frequently to be motivated by moral/ethical judgement

How terrible! We should stamp out morals and ethics right away.

Actually what you'll probably see

[rsilvergun]

is brutal repression of those people. That's what's going on in Mexico & South America. But good job making yourself feel better by suggesting the problem will naturally and painlessly take care of itself. The best part? There's an excellent chance you'll get caught up in that repression too as the government expands it's powers to do nastier and nastier things to it's citizens in the name of keeping order.

Re:Actually what you'll probably see

[Solandri]

Brutal repression happens in those places because the wealthy there are an exclusive group. They maintain their status by actively preventing others from becoming wealthy, thus others cannot join their group and dilute their economic power (as a percentage of the country's economy). They maintain their big fish in a little pond status by making sure the pond stays small. A side-effect of this repression is that it keeps the average citizen stuck in poverty. This repression results in the average GDP per capita in those countries (a measure of each person's productivity) being mired down around $10k/yr (Mexico = $10,300/yr, Brazil = $11,200/yr).. The wealthy there won't allow it to go any higher. And because they control most of the wealth, most of the economic activity in those countries is wealthy people buying and selling to each other.

It can't happen in the U.S. because the wealthy here haven't been an exclusive group for a long time. Most people in the U.S. lead fully productive lives (by modern standards - $53k/yr GDP per capita). Consequently, most of the economic activity in the U.S. is from average (and even low) income people buying stuff. If you look at the IRS income tax statistics, a full 44% of gross individual income goes to people making less than $100k/yr. 68% by people making less than $200k/yr. If you say "the wealthy" comprises anyone making over $1 million/yr, they account for less than 10% of U.S. income.

This means that in order for those U.S. millionaires (and billionaries) to stay millionaires, people with lower income must maintain their income so they can continue to buy the stuff that the millionaires are selling. If everyone but the millionaires in Mexico and Brazil lost their jobs, it wouldn't affect most of those millionaires' incomes since they're mostly selling to each other. If everyone but the millionaires in the U.S. lost their jobs, the millionaires would panic because 90% of their income comes from selling to those now-unemployed people.

If the U.S. were to fall into brutal repression like Central and South America with widescale loss of jobs, it would result in about an 80% reduction in GDP per capita, meaning those millionaires would lose about 80% of their income. They don't want that. They want to see the lower and middle classes continue to make decent incomes almost as much as the lower and middle classes do. If widescale job losses were to begin among the middle and lower classes in the U.S., the wealthy would start to panic as the loss of customers affected their bottom lines. And you'd see all income classes in the U.S. working together to figure out ways to get those people employed again.

You can see the same thing if you compare GDP (PPP) per capita - the mean - vs the median income. The mean spreads the income of the wealthy across all citizens, while the median tells you how much income the 50th percentile citizen is making. The ratio of the two gives you a sense how much the economy is skewed towards the wealthy. For the U.S., these numbers are a mean of $56,115.7 vs a median of $30,960. A 1.81 ratio. For Mexico it's $16,988.4* mean vs $5,160 median, a 3.29 ratio, indicating a much larger share of each worker's productivity is diverted into income for the wealthy. (And for comparison, since everyone seems to like comparing the U.S. with the Scandinavian countries, the ratios for Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Demark are 1.63, 1.79, 1.72, and 1.77.)

* (Yes $16,988.4 is different from $10,300. Difference between nominal and PPP GDP.)

Min. wage does not matter

[Bruinwar]

A friend has opened three (under contract to open three) "specialty" fast food restaurants. His biggest problem by far & he has a lot of problems, is the difficulty in hiring people. If he does get a good worker, he can find himself in bidding wars with other restaurants. All of his stores are in more affluent areas so local kids are not interested. He can't get away with paying any employee minimum wage. It seems that unless a employer is based in a low income, high unemployment area, minimum wage means nothing, they gotta pay more, sometimes a LOT more.

Them lines go out the door but he is not making any money so far because of his labor costs as they are a lot higher than his business model forecasts predicted. But damn does he work his ass off!

Re:But lets raise minimum wage! -'earn'?

[psmoot]

Meddling seems very frequently to be motivated by moral/ethical judgement

How terrible! We should stamp out morals and ethics right away.

What I meant was more along the lines of "I think X is bad. Ban it!" where X is in "dancing", "drinking", "women voting", "pacifism", "homosexuality", "women's voting rights", and so on.

Morals and ethics are a find thing. They're the only thing which makes society work. Just let's please agree where yours end, mine begin, and what are the ones we agree on.